


spaces between us

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3617559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn processes; what he needs versus what he wants. Or, the inevitable short fic that's meant as catharsis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spaces between us

**Author's Note:**

> little something to honor zayn, and his boys. feels incomplete but then--that's rather fitting, isnt it?

His phone stays silent for a long time.

The initial call was hard enough, wasn’t it, telling the label he wasn’t coming back, figuring out the legalities, making the final decision. Lots of money lost, lots of muttering voices, lots of cajoling words. An epic phone call, really, one for the books. A proud and tired part of him will always remember it as the final and most important time he stood up for himself in the face of massive pressure and mind blowing fear.

But it’s this, the next step, breaking it to the boys, that hurts the most. Just like he knew it would, because he can give up fame and all the shit that comes with it, but giving up friends—giving up family—that’s never been easy. Here’s where he doesn’t feel like a superstar or a normal bloke just staying over his mum’s. Here’s where he feels every ounce of weight in what he’s about to do. What he’s about to give up.

Here’s where he feels only like a brother, worried sick about leaving behind four others.

And it’d be simple to just let the label communicate the news. To turn a leave of absence into leaving the band, and let the harried hugs and whispered encouragements be the last thing the boys ever give to him. It’d be possible, to make “I need rest, and time, and space, yeah?” be code for “I’m never coming back I’m so sorry I’m so so sorry,” just so he never has to officially say the word to their faces.

But he has five years of growing and learning and loving and losing and living that he’s done with these people. He owes them. And he needs them, still. After. Always. Band or no band.

So he picks up his phone and brings up FaceTime and as his finger hovers over the name LT, he takes a breath.

When the call is connected, it’s to a small square with four sweaty and concerned faces, familiar but far away in a way that causes his chest to ache now.

"Hiya, lads," he says.

Closing his eyes and drinking in the answering cheers, Zayn gets ready to say goodbye.

 

-

 

At first, the time off is nice.

It’s also fucking terrifying, a feeling of complete and utter freedom that is almost suffocating in its entirety. His whole family wants to celebrate new beginnings—feed him and clap him on his shoulder and tell him things’ll work out brilliantly, inshAllah. But he finds it’s a bit too much, causes his heart to race too hard, when he has to talk about projects and plans or the lack thereof.

So he tries to give himself a routine, some sense of continuity. Tries to focus on doing what he so firmly decided he had to, after he realized The Mirror had more power over his own fucking life and legacy than he did. He tries to experience the world as a normal lad of twenty two, throw himself aggressively into things he’s only had small pieces of over the past five years: eating his mum’s food, painting and drawing, working on his own music, finally watching Captain America 2. But eventually, the days lazing around the house, texting Perrie and watching Netflix and studiously avoiding the internet—they add up. They make Zayn feel boxed in again.

Because, like. He closes his eyes sometimes and feels the turn of wheels under his feet, hears the faint rumble of a screaming crowd, curls into the phantom heat of overhead lights and sweaty embraces from boys he knows better than himself.

And it’s frustrating, the way he moves between stagnating and dreaming. Leaving the band was a decision fueled by his desire to look ahead, to move through the world as the captain of his own fucking destiny, thanks, absent of shit commentary from people he doesn’t even know. But as he’s busy trying to understand how to live in a future of his own making, Zayn realizes there’s still a past he hasn’t properly left behind.

The texts on his phone prove he’s not the only one.

 

-

 

_wish u were here the stadium is sick and niallers eaten his weight in nandos lol rly wish u were here_

_Zap! I had a joint and a fucking minute to breathe, how are you? New episode of CBB is shit btw_

_Did you know lobsters don’t actually mate for life? Love you. Xx_

_Zayn ! U savin me some of ur mums food ? Those pockets of meat amazing YEA_

And most of all, in every variation that could ever exist:

 _I miss you_ _Miss you_ _Miss you so much_ _I miss u_

 

-

 

The one he looks at for a very long time—too long, long after he should already be asleep and long enough to remind him this isn’t the life he’s always lived, here in Bradford or hours away in London—comes from a number he hasn’t yet put into his phone. It’s not rare, for contacts to change, especially with the way their information gets leaked sometimes. But it’s the first time he doesn’t know who it is, behind the screen, sending him words that make his throat work and his eyes burn:

_we don’t know if we can do this without you_

He goes to sleep without sending a reply. What can he say to show them that they won’t ever be doing this alone, no matter how it might feel?

What can he say that he would even believe himself?

 

-

 

Perrie doesn’t quite know what to do with him, eventually.

This whole time, she’s been a mate above all else, someone for him to talk to and listen to him, someone who knows what it’s like to feel hunted and scared, like pieces of her life are being torn away by millions of faceless strangers, re shaped and released without her permission, turning her own face and name and self into someone she can’t recognize anymore.

Pez, she gets it. She does. And she does try to help.

But there’s a look in her eyes when she comes round, like she can’t quite believe he actually did something about it. Like she can’t quite fathom sacrificing this one part of himself to save another.

"It’s just…the girls," Perrie explains, softly. Her hand is cool on his head, soothing. "I couldn’t ever leave the girls."

She says it, Zayn thinks, like it was easy for him. Like it isn’t a physical loss he feels every day, every second, akin to mourning a person who’s died, that sharp but distant yearning and ache, that reminder of hollow places in the home he's tried to carve out for himself. Like he doesn’t still turn to people who aren’t there to share a joke, like he doesn’t still listen to songs he won’t ever again sing onstage, like he doesn't try harmonizing in a low voice, an awkward echo without the partners he’s come to know in his blood, his bones. 

"Yeah," he says, staring listlessly at the ceiling, “‘s what I thought, too."

 

-

 

It’s not the music that haunts him. It’s not the fame. It’s not the rush of performing or the financial security. None of that matters, because none of that is really gone. Not truly.

He’s saved enough money, and he’s got other projects. He will sing again. And he reckons he’ll always be a bit more famous than he likes, if the sweet (and sometimes scary) comments he finally lets himself look at online are any indication.

What Zayn thinks most about is this:

Staring up at Christ the Redeemer, shoulder to shoulder with the people who saw him through most every first a boy could have. Gaping at a fucking monument backdropped by a Brasillian sky, knowing he was luckier than anyone on Earth because there was so much love and wonder to be had in this life, and he was experiencing every single bit of it right alongside the very best boys alive.

He misses, beyond anything else, the way everything felt so new. The way everything felt like it was safe, even if it wasn’t, because they were doing it together.

Somewhere along the journey, the days began to blur and stretch. The anxiety that always lived under his skin began to manifest into something real and debilitating. And instead of locking arms with his mates and riding out the storm, Zayn began searching for lighthouses and buoys, anything to keep him from drowning.

This, the escape, the retreat, the coming back to shore—it’s his way of saving himself. Biding his time, so that things can feel, one day, new again.

When everything begins again, the only thing he’s not sure he will have is the only thing that helped him get through it the first time:

Them.

 

-

 

"Are you feeling better, at least?"

Hearing Louis’ voice is strange. Because it’s so easy to close his eyes and picture them being in the same room, smoking and laughing and talking shit. But really, they’re worlds apart and it’s hard; distance with family was easier, almost, than it is with his friends. At least then, Zayn didn’t expect life to stand still. Now, he always enters conversations with the boys feeling a half step behind, scrambling to catch up.

"Hey," Louis says, and at least the way he sounds, rough and affectionate, is the same. "Are you feeling better?" he repeats.

Zayn knows what he’s really asking. Was it worth it? Was it the right decision? Are you happy now?

In some ways, he could say, “Yeah, mate. I’m doing great.” There are less mood swings, and more peaceful mornings, and he no longer approaches each day as a crapshoot of unbelievable lethargy or dangerously frenetic worry. Spiritually and physically, Zayn's feeling a lot better.

But in other ways, he could say, “Nah, mate, this fucking sucks,” because if he’s honest, Zayn isn’t getting used to going at it alone. He thinks now that he put his roots too deep into the same ground as the others; there’s no uprooting him, not really. Pieces of him are still stuck there, with laughing voices and stage lights gone bright. Down in the core of him, where his heart hurts behind his ribs, Zayn's not feeling better at all. He wonders if he ever will. If maybe this is the price he must pay, like a devil's bargain. A life for a life—and the sacrifice in question is the path of unrealized potential, where they topped charts till they were in well into their thirties, reaching heights no other group ever did before, them against the world, always.

It wouldn't have been a straight path to travel. Nor an easy one. But it would've been one they all traveled together, and for that alone, Zayn wishes sometimes he'd chosen it.

Still. The birds sing and he's eating cereal and there's no one telling him he's waging jihad against teenage girls. And Louis, and the rest of the boys, are here with him, a little bit less constant but as warm as ever.

"It’s complicated," is what Zayn finally says.

Maybe one day, it won't be.

Till then, he'll see things through.

 

 


End file.
